


Checking Out

by mortalitasi



Series: dog days [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 14:54:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's never been all that good at letting go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checking Out

I’LL LET YOU LEAVE. IT’S GOOD MANNERS.

 

...

 

_“Why are you making that face?”_

_He lowers the shampoo bottle with all the disgust reserved for things that are found at the bottom of manholes and looks up at her, brows furrowed, wrinkles forming—he sort of looks like a really pissed-off dog when he does that, but she doesn’t think he’d appreciate the comparison._

_“I can’t use this,” he says, as though it was a given from the start. Granted, the shampoo bottle doesn’t have the appearance of something he’d usually go for, but this was (in his own words) a_ desperate situation _. There is one thing Leng hates more than loudmouthed morons, and it’s going without a shower for more than a day. He’s fastidious about it, bordering on obsessive, and she’d be in total agreement if he didn’t feel like taking her head off when circumstances deny him what he considers the minimal standards for personal hygiene._

_“You were the one who told me you were out,” Amirah replies and crosses her arms. They’re standing on either sides of the kitchen counter with her shampoo bottle settled in the middle between them like an unfortunate bystander caught in the crossfire of some horrible shootout._

_“I am,” he answers stiffly, mouth barely moving. “And I asked for a substitute. This doesn’t even qualify.”_

_“Well, it’s all I’ve got,” she snaps._

_He makes a magnificent face, directing part of his glare at the bottle on the counter. “That thing smells – ”_

_She feels the vein in her forehead jump to life. “Are you saying I don’t smell good?”_

_“ – girly. It smells girly.”_

_She blinks at him. Once. Twice. His lips press into a thin, thin line._

_“…Wait, were you being serious? Or have you magically aged_ backward _?”_

_“Shut up. It’s flowery and – strong. It’s like a garden on steroids.”_

_Her scowl matches his. Tough competition. “And I’m guessing that is an unacceptable way for His Royal Highness to smell.”_

_“It’s different. I don’t mind it on you,” he says, and then seems to realize what he just admitted and shuts his mouth so tight she can see the puckering of it above his chin._

_Asshole. Always making her feel… weird._

_She shrugs and then turns her back on him, making a beeline toward the couch, where she’s left her datapad._

_“No can do. It’s either that or go without. Your choice.”_

_Amirah hears him make an unintelligible, frustrated sound, and then listens to him swipe the bottle off the counter. Good. He’ll survive – while smelling like jasmine and ginger. Ha._

_…_

The drone disappears in a flicker of green light, trailing sparks as it powers down.

“You can’t leave yet!” Liara cries, stepping after it as though that’s going to bring the VI back. It’s easy to forget that Liara’s still hopeful they may get out of this mess, somehow, because it’s easy to forget what you don’t have yourself. This wasn’t going to end well, right from the start. There are some others that know it too – Javik. Garrus. Tevos. It’s about managing expectations, being realistic. There’s nothing about this situation that calls for hope, though there are threads of it everywhere, in everyone, wherever she looks.

She doesn’t know why. It’s not logical. How can you face the oncoming storm and believe your little glass house is going to survive it at all?

Amirah is not coming back from this. She knew that the minute the first capital ship broke line of Earth’s horizon.

“Indoctrinated presence detected,” is all the drone offers before it totally dies away and a strong gust of wind sweeps through the temple of Athame, strong enough to make Ashley cover her eyes with an arm.

Liara turns toward the entrance, pistol leveled, reaction time as on-point as ever, but that’s when the lights turn on. All three of them turn away from the glare of the cold floodlights. The temple is dim, full of purple and blue and soft colors that aren’t anything like harsh brightness spreading throughout the place. Dust and pebbles glance by Amirah’s cheeks, and she smells burning flesh, ash, hot rock and fire – the heavy metallic dankness that the Reapers carry with them wherever they go. But the ship hovering outside the temple is not Reaper. It’s –

“The Cerberus guy,” Ashley says, grinding her teeth so hard Amirah can hear the grating of bone on bone.

She’s right. Amirah looks directly into the shine though it makes her vision shimmer with floaters, picks out the only silhouette emerging, marks his shoulders, the hang of his arms, the methodical stride – the weapon held loosely in his left hand. There’s no mistake. She looks for someone else, another person, maybe one of the Cerberus lackeys, the modified ones, the – husks, but it’s only him. Only Leng.

_Indoctrinated presence detected._

No.

…

 

_“Why bother?”_

_She takes her jacket from the back of the chair and slips into it. “Because I like punctuality.”_

_He crosses his feet and frowns at her. He hasn’t changed out of his pajamas yet, in stark contrast to her. “You’re going to be about fifteen minutes early, and everyone else is going to be late anyway. Do you_ want _to be stuck in a room full of nimrods for an hour?”_

_“It’s a vocational lecture and I intend to attend it,” Amirah reminds him as she pulls back her hair, smoothing any flyaways with one palm before gathering it all into one ponytail. “And you’re probably planning to skip because you’re too smart for these things anyway and you have your future all organized already.”_

_“You know it’s true,” he says. Smirks a little. She hates it when he does that._

_“It doesn’t make you any less of a crapcanoe.”_

_“That’s a new one.”_

_She pops the cap of her lip-balm open and swipes it over her mouth. “I strive toward creativity.”_

_He considers her for a moment. This time there’s no play in his voice. “Why?”_

_She shrugs. “It keeps everyone happy, helps with appearances. There are advantages to being friendly. Things you get. Opportunities. Imitating isn’t hard, just takes practice. You can’t do it. You’re too honest.”_

_“That sounds like an insult,” he says, watching her while she checks herself over in the small mirror on her nightstand._

_“That’s because it is one,” she informs him. She stands, brushing down her pants and straightening her sleeves. “Hitting people with the truth is more satisfying if you do it when they think they’re safe.”_

_He replies with a noncommittal grunt. “You’re talkative today.”_

_“No. Just giving advice you should think about.”_

_Now the smirk from earlier is back, but bigger, more confident. As if he doesn’t have enough of that already. “Amirah, it sounds like you’re looking out for me.”_

_It’s already been a few years, but his casual use of her given name still makes her heart jump and stutter like she’s twelve and down with a first-time crush. How pathetic. She sniffs and pulls down on her jacket to make sure there are no lingering wrinkles hiding in the crooks of her arms or on the back._

_“Have fun staring at the walls,” he tells her as she starts walking off. She turns to look at him over one shoulder, very unimpressed._

_“At least I won’t be late.”_

_…_

Sometimes she likes turning the lights down in the cabin and sitting at the foot of the bed, drink in hand, watching the bubbles in the tank grow and float by.

She should have a fear of the dark. It should remind her of being spaced. Of losing air, or watching the sun come up over the other side of Alchera, or feeling like she was drowning in absolute zero and utter absence of matter, _if only I could just breathe,_ acutely aware of the disconnect between the logical side of her mind repeating “I’m dying” and the physiological part of her that was awash with panic and terror. It doesn’t. Nothing really reminds her of anything anymore.

There’d been a small, untouched portion of her mind that’d thought maybe – maybe if she really did die, she’d see this whole new other side people talked about, that people believed in, and not just humans – all the aliens have versions of what the afterlife is like, about what happens and where you go, about how what you do while you’re here determines your fate in the great beyond. The beyond Ashley believes in the way Amirah believes oxygen is needed for breathing – without question, which isn’t believing at all. It’s conviction. It’s faith. It’s _assurance._

And there’d been nothing. Just dark. Like right now.

Does that mean she needs to try again? Does the charm of the third time work with death? She’s not sure she could stand being brought back a second time. The nothing used to be a topic of indifference for her, much like a lot of things are. She’d half-expected it to be what dying was like. She misses it. She wanted to see them, at first, or grasp at the chance of there being more than just a cold sleep and a morgue slab, but now – she doesn’t mind. It could be the nothing, it could be the everything, it could be something in between. She just wants to return to it. Her fingers tighten around her half-empty glass.

_I’m so tired._

 

 

…

 

_“Your taste in music sucks.”_

_She pushes his rolling chair away with one powerful kick, sending him skidding across the room._

_“_ You _suck.”_

_He steadies himself by grabbing at the side of her desk as he passes it. “Mature.”_

_“You’ve done nothing to deserve me being mature. I don’t insult what you listen to.”_

_“Your face whenever my stuff comes up is all I need. You’re more transparent than you think.”_

_She opens her mouth to reply to him and stops when she comes to the conclusion that saying anything in return would culminate in ‘I’m not, you just know how to read me,’ and that’s not an ego-boost she’s going to be supplying him with today. Her jaws click shut and she goes back to the half-finished physics equations displayed on her terminal’s monitor._

_“You were about to say something,” he points out. Bastard doesn’t miss a thing, does he?_

_Velocity. Mass. Density. Numbers. “I wasn’t.”_

_The next time he engages her, it’s after he’s walked over to her chair and set his chin on her head. She sighs in exasperation when his arms block her view of the terminal, but his warmth is nice. Not that she’ll ever tell him as much._

_She can feel the hum of his voice through her back when he speaks. “Yes, you were.”_

_“I_ wasn’t.”

 

 

…

 

 

Neither Liara nor Ashley have to warn her when he makes his stupid final jump.

She catches him easily enough, the way she always has – had. It was predictable. It was sloppy. It was unlike him, but it was _him_. Not a machine. Not – anything else. No one but him. She lets him slide to the ground after it’s done, stands there while her tech clacks as it gets rid of the disposable omni-blade, watches on as the blood pools under him on the reflective chrome tiles the Illusive Man covered the floor of this room with.

The scarlet beyond the viewing glass turns everything varying shades of red, crimson… vermillion. Ruby. Her mind loops the synonyms in her head. A silly concept to cling to. She turns to the console, brings it up, even though she knows the Illusive Man must have wiped everything from the data banks ages before they set foot on Chronos Station. It gives her something to do.

“We’ll make sure no one’s still left outside,” Liara says, and she takes Ashley with her from the room, though Williams spares Amirah a backward look before they leave.

She’s still facing the console, outlined in the glow of the dying star, fingers moving aimlessly through empty folders, bringing up garbage files or pieces of info so insignificant and unhelpful that they weren’t altered at all. Her hand stops when she can’t hear their footsteps any longer. She can’t decide whether it was coincidence, or Liara… knowing. It’s good enough. It’ll have to be. She kneels by him, reaches out, pulls the visor from his face. It comes loose with a snap and click. Her stomach tightens at what she sees under it.

The corruption’s started creeping in from the right. It’s all over the bridge of his nose, spidering out from the sockets of his eyes in thick, tapering veins, swirled like ivy vines growing too fast. Beneath the initial blue of the changed skin is the white of circuitry. Implants. Reaper-make. His eyes are open – one looks like it’s part of the Leng she always knew: brown, dark, with an aura of hard-to-see orange around the pupil. It shows – showed – in the right lights. The other eye is a color that she’s only ever associated with Saren, its sclera black. It’s a sacrilege. The shape is still the same. The curve of his eyelashes is still the same. But everything else is _wrong_.

She sucks in a sharp breath, controlling herself, and brushes carefully at the fringe covering his temple, moving it out of the way.

That’s when he gasps, blood gurgling in his throat, and his hands curl reflexively. She startles so badly she sits plain down, propping herself up with two palms, watching him while the anxiety sears a path through her throat. He blinks, looking at the ceiling, and then his head turns to the side, but he doesn’t seem surprised to find her there. Every time his chest lowers she can hear the rasp of liquid bubbling in his gullet.

Air hisses out between his teeth. He always had great teeth.

“It’s… quiet,” he says, so low that if anything else had been going on around them, she wouldn’t have been able to catch it. He sounds relieved. His eyes move up and down, seeing her, one brown, one blue, and all Kai. He coughs. His fists grow lax. “Good thing… you weren’t late.”

She holds herself so tightly she can feel her diaphragm complaining, keeps her gaze fixed on him as his eyelids slide shut, as the last breath leaves him, and finally, peace steals over his face.

 

 

…

 

_He turns into her whenever he’s asleep. She gives him a hard time about it. He kisses her. She puts out the lights and threads her fingers through his hair._

_“Goodnight, loser.”_


End file.
